


Bitter Blessing

by Quiet_Shadow



Series: Blessings In Disguise [1]
Category: Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Childbirth, F/M, M/M, Mech Preg, Mpreg, Post-Break Up, Sparklings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:49:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3846373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quiet_Shadow/pseuds/Quiet_Shadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elita is dead, Optimus is basically exiled from Cybertron after being assigned to a maintenance team, he's stranded in the middle of nowhere -- well, somewhere between two Space Bridges locations anyway --, Sentinel won't take any of his calls or even a written note and, oh, did he mention he was going into labor with their Sparkling? Someone, somewhere, had it out against him.</p>
<p>Or: where Optimus find himself sadly and bitterly reflecting on the recent events in his life, and welcome someone worth living for from now on...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter Blessing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thepheonixqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepheonixqueen/gifts), [Dellessa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dellessa/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Shades of A Future Lost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3846232) by [thepheonixqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepheonixqueen/pseuds/thepheonixqueen). 



> Inspired by the fic 'Shades of A Future' by thepheonixqueen -- upon reading it the first time, I couldn't help but imagine an outcome, and here's the result.

The contractions were becoming more and more frequent with each passing joors, and Optimus moaned in pain as a particularly strong one hit him. One hand grabbed his swollen belly while the other reached for his lower back. His back struts were killing him.

“He’s coming, Ratchet,” he panted as the medic helped him take a few more steps around the _Orion_ ’s small medbay. Walking around was supposed to help speed up the emergence process, and Optimus half-prayed the old medic was right. He himself knew next to nothing about birthing a Sparkling, and he could only rely on what Ratchet had been able to share.

“I can see that,” the white and red medibot snapped, helping Optimus further and coaxing him toward the medical berth. He had been very brisk since the moment the Prime had come to him earlier in the solar cycle, after he had felt his gestation chamber shift and lower itself, sure sign that the emergence of his Sparkling was imminent. Optimus couldn’t begrudge him his ill mood, though. He knew it was just because Ratchet was worried. The _Orion_ ’s medbay hadn’t been planned with Sparkling’s delivery in mind, after all, and he himself wasn’t a specialist in Carrier and Sparkling care. Not to mention, they didn’t have all the medical equipment they’d need if the emergence didn’t go as smoothly as it should.

Wincing as he felt another contraction hit, Optimus let himself be installed over the berth, pedes in the makeshift stirrups Ratchet had installed at the bottom, and he tried not to feel too embarrassed as the medic bended over to peer between his legs, looking intently at his dilated valve. Nobody had looked at him down there… aside of Elita and Sentinel, he thought with a pang of regret, mixed with bitterness and, to his shame, anger.

It hadn’t supposed to to be that way, he thought sadly as Ratchet patted him gently, reassuring him it wouldn’t be long now.

He should have given birth on Cybertron, surrounded by Elita and Sentinel both, each holding one of his hands. It shouldn’t have happened now, but in many, many stellar cycles, once he had graduated from the Academy and earned his place in the Elite Guard, alongside his lovers. Since neither of them had any desire to carry, then he would have taken a desk job, and made time to form a family unit, with a Sparkling or two, confident and secure in their mutual love.

Instead, here he was: thrown out of the Academy after taking the blame for one of his lovers’ death, alone but for a small team of Autobots that the mainstream system had rejected. He may have been granted the title and rank of Prime, which was a small mercy from the Magnus due to their Supreme Commander thinking it was a waste to totally get rid of him, but he was Prime only in name. His pay was barely more than what Bumblebee or Bulkhead earned. In the end, he was just a glorified maintenance ‘bot, although he didn’t dare to acknowledge it aloud.

What was Sentinel doing at this very moment? The random thought hit him about the same time as a contraction, and he could always pretend the coolant gathering at the corner of his optics was from the physical pain instead of his moral anguish.

It hurt. Not just losing Elita, but also Sentinel’s rejection of him; the three of them had been so close, and now… Optimus tried not to blame Sentinel -- he truly didn’t. The three of them had been stupid; they should never had gone to Archa Seven in the first place. All of them, even Elita held part of the blame. Sentinel... Sentinel was just grieving, in a most extreme way. That’s why he hadn’t spoke out when they had faced an inquiry, and it was why Optimus had allowed himself to take all the blame. It was grief speaking. Just grief. And still… and still it hurt, because now, Sentinel wouldn’t even take his calls.

Optimus had tried. He had really tried, especially once he had realized he was sparked up, and that the bitlet could very well be Sentinel’s just as he could be Elita’s. But the other mech had refused to take them, closing off the communication window the moment he saw Optimus, without the red and blue mech being allowed to utter a single word. Sentinel might have been about to become a Creator, and he didn’t know… and perhaps didn’t care, a small voice whispered in the back of Optimus’ processor.

“Uuuugh,” he whimpered as another wave of pain went through him.

“It’s okay, Optimus,” Ratchet said, patting him. “One last effort, and the little one will be out. Your valve is more than ready, you just need to push.”

Easier said than done, but Optimus did as ordered. He could feel his calipers, the way they had spiralled open and wide to allow the passage of the Sparkling’s body. Various fluids and thick lubricant was gushing out of him, easing the passage for the frame making its way out of his gestation chamber. It was painful, and he wished Ratchet had been able to offline his pain receptors, but sadly, they didn’t have the proper blockers for an emergence on board, and he had to make do with standard ones, which weren’t nearly half as efficace.

In a proper hospital, or on a well-stocked ship, giving birth to his future son or daughter would have been so much easier, he thought painfully as he pushed and felt the Sparkling work its way down the birth canal. If he had been on Cybertron… But he couldn’t return, could he? And it had little to do with his disgrace, and more to do with being a maintenance worker for the Space Bridges Nexus.

Space Bridges technicians’ skills were constantly in demand, as the Nexus was fragile and always susceptible to become damaged. A maintenance crew could spend thousands of stellar cycles on duty without leaves -- or so short ones they didn’t warrant returning to Cybertron, as it was time and energy consuming. Most crews ended up living off on their ships or in the various spaceports and colonies near the Bridges, almost never setting a foot on Cybertron again. It wasn’t quite exile, but at this very moment, it sounded like it, Optimus thought bitterly as he moaned and pushed.

Primus, he hoped there wouldn’t be any complication with the birth. Nobody aside of his crew knew he was about to pop a Sparkling out, to be crude. Well, someone in the hierarchy had to know, as Optimus had filed the paperwork declaring he was sparked up several orbital cycles ago. However, given how fast the administration was and how low by order of priority personal notices were, he didn’t think his note had been filtered yet. If it had been, he probably wouldn’t have been given birth on the Orion to begin with.

The Prime hadn’t been able to consult a specialist, nor to buy most of the necessities a Sparkling would need upon birth and growing up. Each time they reached a port, they were called back for yet another mission, with just enough time to pick the supplies for their ships. No time to get into town and contact anyone, nor go shopping.

Optimus wondered if someone, somewhere, wasn’t being deliberately cruel with him. He knew Elita had had relations in high places, and that several of them had assisted to his hearing and witnessed his dismissal from the Academy. He didn’t doubt some of them carried a grudge just as big, if not bigger than Sentinel’s own over the death of the pretty yellow femme. Optimus was a convenient scapegoat for their rage, and if they could go out of their way to make the Prime pass as little time as possible with fellow Cybertronians… It was just an hypothesis, of course, but somehow, the Prime thought it was the right one.

Optimus pushed again.

“I see the helm, Prime! Continue like that, you’re doing great,” Ratchet’s voice broke him out of any further consideration and, gathering his strengths and clenching his dental plates, Optimus did just so.

He shouted once last time and he felt the small body slide out of him and into the medibot’s hands. Little crying and chirps immediately resonated in the air, and Optimus’ Spark suddenly felt lighter. He had… he had done it. He had given birth to his Sparkling. Who was the Sire? Sentinel? Elita? He was anxious to ask, as the angle was wrong and he couldn’t quite see the Sparkling, but as he opened his mouth, he moaned. A fresh pang of pain shook his frame, and Ratchet’s optic ridges climbed high.

“Optimus?” he asked worriedly, even as he worked quickly to clean and wrap the little frame in his hands in a thermal blanket.

“I… I… still have contractions,” the Prime wheezed out painfully.

“Oh Primus,” Ratchet said, trying not to facepalm -- not as if he could, with the bitlet in his arms. “Twins. Of course you’d give birth to twins in the middle of nowhere,” he groaned.

“T… twins?” Optimus asked, optics bulging and jaw dropping open. “But that’s not… your scan didn’t pick…?” he fumbled, wincing as he felt another contraction hit him.

“I’m working with normal scanners, not specialized ones for Carrying cycles!” Ratchet snapped, though he looked ashamed of his outburst, especially as the Sparkling in his hands started to cry. “If one of the twins is bigger than the other, then his Spark signal might have partly or completely hidden his sibling’s own -- especially if they’re split-spark or polar twins instead of fraternal. Granted, I’m not an expert,” he grumbled, “and I’m working half-blind here. Just… just continue to push, and it’ll be fine. Me, I’m going to call on some help, okay?”

Optimus didn’t answer. Optics shuttering, he concentrated on getting the second miniature frame out of him. It seemed both harder and simpler at the same time. The first Sparkling had ‘paved the way’, so to speak, but the second seemed to be bigger than its sibling, and Optimus felt exhausted by the first birth. Distantly, he was aware of Ratchet shouting for Prowl to get his aft in the medbay to help, for Bumblebee to bring him more thermal blankets and for Bulkhead to prepare a second makeshift Sparkling berth.

Prowl’s hands on his shoulders, massaging away some of his pain and tenseness. Optimus looked at him from the corner of his optics with a small smile. “Th… thanks.”

Prowl just hummed, nodding and massaging until Ratchet called him out to hold the bundle of blankets hiding the Sparkling, the medibot himself preparing to receive the second Sparkling in his hands. Optimus grunted and panted and, with a last effort, he pushed a last time. The second Sparkling small body slide out easily enough, the little being crying the moment he was out. Optimus smiled despite himself and allowed himself to relax.

Over. It was over. He had done it.

“The first one is a femme,” Ratchet grumbled as he handed him over the second Sparkling, while Prowl gently placed the first bundle in the crook of Optimus’s right arm. “The second one is a mech.”

“... Polar twins?” Optimus asked with a tired voice as he looked at them.

Cybertronians had several types of twins, the most current being split-spark ones, polar ones or fraternal ones. Split-sparks twins resulted from a single spark splitting in two early on during the gestation process, before the construction of the frame even started. Split-sparks twins tended to share close looks, and shared a special bond together, being able to speak without using coms or feeling what the other felt, for example.

Polar twins, on the other hand, resulted from a different kind of spark-splitting. Early in the gestation process, just like the average spark-splitting, the Sparkling’s Spark ‘glitched’, thus sending off contrary command for the frame’s construction. The Carrier either miscarried… or the ‘glitch’ fixed itself by polarizing the Spark, thus separating the conflicting programs into two different but still linked at their basis Sparks. The polarizing resulted in a femme and a mech Sparkling, with some linking traits such as strange speech patterns and mirror moves. It wasn’t rare for a Sparkling to favor a servo while his or her twin favored the other, for example. Their internal systems also looked like a mirror, with one having his Spark chamber on the right, and the other twin with a Spark chamber on the left.

If Optimus had just gave birth to both a femme and a mech, then they logically should be polar twins. However, as he caught a first glimpse of their face, he realized they weren’t. His vents stalled briefly as he took in what he saw.

“Nope. You got two healthy fraternal twins, from what my scans tell me,” Ratchet said with a half-smile. He was watching Optimus carefully, though, just like Prowl did.

Optimus didn’t answer. The words barely reached him. He was too busy contemplating his infants. His fraternal twins. Fraternal.

Fraternal, for Cybertronians, meant the Carrier had been sparked by several partners at once, and that the Sparklings were only linked through their Carrier’s systems and their donors’ coding. They shared little with each others, although the nanites of their Creators may have given them similar traits such as colors or size or even looks. Some argued they couldn’t truly be called Twins in the purest sense of the word, but the consensus was that, since they had emerged from the same reproductive cycle, then they merited the title.

Optimus couldn’t stop detailing them, searching for differences, and being stuck by the ressemblance. He wondered idly and bitterly if it was Fate’s sense of humor.

The femme, first. She looked… she looked a lot like Elita had. She shared the same model of helmet, the same kind of face -- although her derma was grey, like Sentinel’s, and her lips thinner than Elita, and more like Optimus’. She was also, well, blockier. She didn’t quite have Elita’s smooth body type; instead, she was more armored, something she had obviously inherited from Optimus. Also, she was…

“Pink?” he asked aloud. There was some grey, too, inherited from Sentinel, but almost all the armor was pink.

“Well, I suppose she could have been red if you had gotten more to refuel during the coloring stage,” Ratchet groused, fumbling with his scanners as he watched over the small family. “Colors nanites can end up giving washed out or pale colors if the Carrier doesn’t take the right amount of fuel during the gestation… or if the Sire isn’t giving more nanites for the building,” he added in a low voice, trying not to wince.

Optimus just nodded curtly. “... It’s not bad looking on her,” he just said before he looked at the other Sparkling with a soft sigh.

If the femme was the late Elita’s copy, then the mech was obviously Sentinel’s. The Sparkling’s chin was imposing and striking for such a small being -- but, according to Optimus’ memories of the pictures of baby Sentinel that Elita had gleefully shared around to their third’s shame, it was much smaller than Sentinel’s own had been at birth. His helm resembled Optimus more, although the little mech had Sentinel’s helm fins. His torso, or the little Optimus could see, looked like his Carrier’s own -- so the little one would probably be a truckbot. There were two extensions on his back, though, that made Optimus wonder if perhaps he wouldn’t grow plow lames, like his Sire.

But the face… the face was Sentinel’s. The mechling also had Sentinel’s colors, Optimus thought with a pang of sadness. However, were Sentinel had been mostly blue with a few orange highlight, the Sparkling had both colors in share. A blue torso and forelegs, orange hips and orange back protrusions, thighs as white as Optimus’ owns… He looked a bit like Optimus, but if someone had put a picture of Sentinel next to the small being, then nobody could have denied the two were related.

A mini Elita… and a mini Sentinel. Optimus let out a short burst of humorless laugher. Truly, Primus and the Allspark had a strange sense of humor. To give him children that were miniature copies from the two bots of his life, one dead and the other happy pretending he didn’t exist…

He could have cried, or laughed, or both.

Thankfully for his dignity and his nerve, Prowl knelt by the medical berth while Ratchet cleaned him up, washing away the fluids between his legs with a rag before putting his pedes out of the stirrups, humming softly. “Those are two beautiful Sparklings, Prime. How are you going to name them?” he asked softly, optics fixated on the two bundles of drowsy Sparklings.

Optimus bit his lips briefly, thinking. There were plenty of designations to choose from, and he had tentatively made lists before, but… none felt right in what he had come up with. In desperation, he reached into his secondary databanks for older memories. When he had been a Youngling, he had naively thought about giving his Sparklings designations of old heroes, but the adult him knew better. Still, he couldn’t deny he liked old, mostly forgotten designation, for they were both classical and exotic at the same time, a perfect mix of modernity and past inheritance.

He scrambled for a moment before pausing, remembering something he felt was appropriate.

“This,” he said as he nodded toward his daughter, “is Ariel. And this,” he said, smiling down softly at the little mech, “is Dion.”

“Ariel and Dion,” Prowl repeated aloud, as if he was testing out the sonority. “Those are fine names,” he added after a beat of silence.

“I agree,” Ratchet grumbled as he drew a thermal blanket over Optimus. “Not bad names at all. Want me to fill out the paperwork to declare their emergence while you rest?” he offered.

“If you’d be so kind,” Optimus said gratefully, feeling suddenly exhausted.

“Rest, Prime. I’ll go announce the rest of our… team the safe arrival of our two newest crew members,” Prowl added with a small smile.

Optimus just hummed. Optics focused on his now recharging Sparkling, he fought not to close his optics just yet. His twins just looked adorable like that, curled against his chest, and he felt a brief pang of sadness at the thought their Sires hadn’t been here to see them greet the world. But, perhaps now they were born, he’d manage to get a hold of Sentinel. Surely, the other Prime would be happy to hear the news he was a Creator now.

At least, Optimus hoped so.

Given his luck, though, Sentinel would block his calls until doomsday, and wouldn’t known about the two bundles of joy before they were old enough to give him a call themselves.

Ah, well… if he missed out on Ariel and Dion’s Sparklinghood, then it’s be his loss, Optimus decided before he succumbed to recharge, an amused half-smile on his lips.


End file.
